Memo: spring cleaning

By Ryan Block | May 28, 2007

Hey everybody, just a little memo since we’re doing some spring cleaning around Engadget. We just wanted to take a moment to respond to everyone who’s written asking about a few reoccurring matters, so here ya go! Oh, feel free to sound off in comments if we forgot anything.

Breaking news and featured stories feeds

We know not everyone can keep up with the flow of news most days, which is why we have two channels for keeping an eye on the most important stuff: breaking news, and featured content. The breaking / featured boxes are off to the right in the center column and are updated instantly when new stories are added, but if you’re addicted to RSS like we are, you can get the feeds as well. Subscribe to breaking news here, and to featured stories here.

Linking in comments (spam and blogspam)

Linking your site in your comment (especially as a signature): don’t do it. It looks like spam, but even if you’re not a real spammer, the real spammers have started doing it too, and now it’s ALL getting reported as spam. Besides, ultimately our comments are a place to discuss, not promote yourself/site. (Likewise, don’t use TinyURL or URL obfuscation tools — those can also get you banned.)

So the bottom lined: people caught URL spamming will be banned. Sorry, we just have to take a hard line, way too many people are complaining about the amount of URL spam showing up in comments.

US vs. worldwide contests

We don’t expect everyone to realize this, but we’re often prevented from making our contests open to entrants outside the country. If we had our druthers every contest would be available to everyone of any age, but due to legal restrictions or requests by the company whose gadgets we’re giving away, that’s not always the case. So we’ll continue keeping as many contests as possible open to international readers — and you’ll stop freaking out when it’s US-only, ok?

Popups or way annoying ads

Believe it or not, our editorial team has as little to do with our advertisers as possible. In other words, when you see an ad you find annoying or that pops up, that’s not our doing. Honestly, most of the time it’s an ad network that slips something in… but please let us know! Send us a nice, non-accusatory message in our comment form, and if you can, get the URL of the ad link, ad images, and any other data you can collect so we can wipe that mother clean off the site. Thanks!

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!